lets, blue, white, and yellow, grow there, with rosy gay-wings,[1] cool-wort, fairy-cup, or mitella, low-cornel, May-star, strawberry, dew-drop, bead-ruby, squaw-vine, partridge-plant, pipsissiwa, pyrolas, loose-strife, ground-laurel, innocence, Michaelmas-daisies of several kinds, perhaps the coptis, or gold-thread, and three or four ferns. Such are the plants often found in these wild, posy patches, about old stumps, in half-cleared woods. Of course, they are not all in flower together; but toward the prime of the spring, one may at times find nearly a dozen kinds in blossom at the same moment. These are all native plants, gathering, as if out of affection, about the roots of the fallen forest trees.
Wednesday, 6th.—Coolish this morning. Chilly people have lighted their parlor fires. Last year we had strawberries the 6th of June, but the present season is more backward. Good walking weather to-day.
It is a pleasing part of the elegance of May, in a temperate climate, that few of the coarser weeds show themselves during that month; or, rather, at that early day, they do not appear in their true character. They are, of course, very troublesome to gardeners from the first, but they do not then obtrude themselves upon general attention. The season advances with great rapidity, however, and already these rude plants are beginning to show themselves in the forms by which we know them. The burdock and nettle, and thistle, &c., &c., are growing too plentifully under fences, and in waste spots; duckweed and purslane, &c., &c.,
- ↑ Gay-wings, Poly-gala paucifolia; Cool-wort, Tiarella cordofolia; Fairy-cup, Mitella dyphylla; May-star, Trientalis Americana; Bead-ruby, Convallaria bifolia; Squaw-vine, Mitchella repens; Partridge plant, Gualtheria; Dew-drop, Dalibaraa.
